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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27949433">Tercet</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tequila_Mockingbird/pseuds/Tequila_Mockingbird'>Tequila_Mockingbird</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Leverage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Fandom Trumps Hate 2020, Getting Together, Other, Parker loves metaphors and they do not always love her back, Pretzels</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:42:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,985</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27949433</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tequila_Mockingbird/pseuds/Tequila_Mockingbird</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hardison pays attention to shit. He is a very smart person. But Hardison will confess freely that he was 100% completely, unreservedly, not-even-expecting-it-a-little surprised when Parker leans over close to his shoulder from where she’s perched on the back of the sofa and murmurs, “Do you want to kiss Eliot?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alec Hardison/Parker, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>218</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fandom Trumps Hate 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/picklesandsweetpea/gifts">picklesandsweetpea</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>With deepest thanks to picklesandsweetpea, both for a generous donation to FairVote and for extraordinary patience! I was all set to write this in March and then COVID-19 pretty much... hit me in the head with a brick, and it took NaNoWriMo to finally pry this out of me. Gratitude also to SecretStorm for both beta-ing and listening to me whine about narrative parallelism; as usual, they kick ass. This is complete and will be posted over the next few days!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Outcast</strong>
</p><p>    Eliot left home when he was eighteen years old. Eliot left home, to be precise, the day before his eighteenth birthday, crashed at a friend’s house that night and enlisted at eight AM sharp. Eliot left home, to be even more precise, with the words “so then stick around and rot here, since that’s what you’re so desperate for me to do, huh?” and his father snarling “your mother would be <em> ashamed</em>” and the screen door latch that he’d been meaning to get around to fixing for almost a month slamming, futile, against the doorjamb. </p><p>    Eliot left home with a backpack that contained three changes of underwear, five pairs of socks, two teeshirts and a Sooners sweatshirt, a pocket knife, his grandfather’s dog-tags, his Walkman and a handful of his favorite tapes, one carefully folded picture of his mom and his sister (and him, grinning a stupid little kid grin), one clumsily folded picture of Aimee in her prom dress (and him, standing awkward next to her and very carefully not grinning at all), and seventy eight dollars and forty one cents in cash. He didn’t have his toothbrush or his deodorant, because he’d been planning to stick that in tomorrow morning after using it, but that was fine, he could buy that at the PX on base. He didn’t have any of his trophies for football or baseball or his track medals or the home-ec certificate he was actually kind of proud of. He didn’t have a hairbrush, but who cared--he’d had a buzzcut since he was twelve, since the first time the comb got stuck in his hair after his mother died, and it’s not like that was going to change any time soon.</p><p>    The Walkman and the tapes didn’t make it long past Basic, and neither did any of the clothes--none of them much of a loss except for the Clapton tape that died in a rewinding accident and the sweatshirt, which ended up too damn covered in blood to be worth washing. The pocket knife lasted longer, but was eventually abandoned on the side of the road in Bangui with a snapped blade. The pictures made it all the way through two different war zones until they ended up carefully left under his pillow (because he knew carrying them on him was an exercise in “too damn bloody to be worth washing”) in a base that got very thoroughly blown up.</p><p>The next time he was back in Oklahoma, Aimee gave him a new picture. That one lasted almost a year before he bled all over it. She gave him a third one, and that one made it seven months. He didn’t ask again after that.  </p><p>    It’s not permitted to wear someone else’s dog tags in an active combat zone, obviously, so his granddad’s set got shifted from locker to locker to pocket to boot. It’s not until the second time he was captured that they got taken off him, and he wasn’t rescued conscious enough to ask anybody to look for them. </p><p>    By the time Eliot’s dumb enough to take a job from Nate Ford, he hasn’t been back to Oklahoma in eight years. Hasn’t been home in twelve. The only thing he has left from Oklahoma is himself, and he’s not entirely sure that counts anymore. He travels light, and he lives light too--no photographs, no momentos. He’s abandoned and replaced a set of good chef’s knives more than a dozen times. He wears the kind of clothing that lets a 5’9” white man blend into a crowd and when they get covered in blood he abandons them, too. He buys toiletries at chain pharmacies and doesn’t have a favorite brand of conditioner. </p><p>    They don’t start out well. Four liars and one honest man, crammed together day after day in a shitty Los Angeles apartment pretending to be an office. And yet, within a month or two he’s bringing them to Aimee. And it’s all very well and good to say that she has a problem that the team can solve, but Eliot knows good and well that if it were any other goddamn year, if he’d been on any other goddamn team, he’d have sent her a check anonymously and been done with it. And yet he didn’t even think of it--went behind Nate’s back because he just <em> knew</em>, bone-deep and certain, that they could help. That they would help. </p><p>    A year later it’s a series of apartments over a bar in Boston, and Eliot’s… starting to enjoy himself. Starting to collect things, again, that he keeps in drawers by the side of the bed and on top of his bureau--a shot-glass, a ticket stub, a hairbrush, a jar of hair <em> mask, </em>a series of beautiful stacking bowls almost too lovely to put things in. He hadn’t lost anything when the first office blew up, but suddenly now he’s keeping his good knives in the kitchen and he’s got a spice rack again. </p><p>    By the time they move to Portland he’s got some things to fucking <em> pack</em>. He’s got a favorite henley, of all the goddamn things, and a team (mostly Hardison) who keeps printing out goddamn pictures of all of them and scattering them around the house in an abject failure of operational security. </p><p>    Honestly, it’s a little embarrassing for the best hitter in the world. </p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>Alien</strong>
</p><p>    Parker has never had a home. Well. Parker has owned homes, legally, in four and a half countries (she doesn’t think Lichtenstein counts? But she isn’t sure), and eleven states (DC definitely counts). She’s received homeowner’s insurance payouts on at least seven more. But. She is pretty sure that when they ask about that, you’re supposed to draw a little square with a crayon and then a little triangle on top, and stick some little square windows and a rectangle door on it, and that’s not supposed to actually suggest the your roof peak is 8/12, because that’s actually really uncommon except for some of those pokey gable-style roofs, which is good because honestly? It’s uncomfortable to hang out on a roof that steep, and the average single family home in America is a 5.5 pitch or a 6.5 pitch, much more comfortable though obviously rainfall conditions vary, and most of the places she breaks into are apartment buildings, anyway?</p><p>Where was she. Oh. Right. She’s pretty sure that the weird little drawing is a home, which is maybe different from… the actual building and is more about, like, the “emotions” that you “feel” when you “go home” or you “are home” or whatever. Parker is still learning about this stuff, so she’s not totally sure. Eliot made her watch <em> Sweet Home, Alabama </em>because he said it was a classic, and she’s pretty sure the whole point of that movie was that </p>
<ol>
<li>Divorce proceedings are criminally inefficient and frankly, the legal status of marriage in America is outdated because it’s just five signatures? A signature is so easy to forge! Parker could forge a signature on a wedding license in her sleep! Also joint bank accounts are <em>absolutely terrifying</em> and </li>
<li>Home is like. That. When Melanie goes back to where she used to sleep and talk to people and the people are still there and know her and that’s a “good” thing, and Melanie feels. Stuff. </li>
</ol><p>Parker has feelings, too, now. Or-- if she asked Alec, he’d probably say she’d had feelings the whole time. He always believes that she’s better than she actually is, which is hard, because Parker is pretty much the best. But. Now, when she has feelings, she can make Sophie explain them to her, and then make Eliot explain Sophie’s explanation. So now she <em> really </em> has feelings, because she knows she has them. Subjective idealists can go and be weird all they want, if you don’t know that you have a bunch of money hidden under your bed, then you <em> don’t have it </em> because you can’t </p>
<ol>
<li>Touch it or </li>
<li>Spend it and that is the whole point of money.</li>
</ol><p>    Before, Parker had places she slept and places she kept her stuff (and her money) and places she broke into in order to look at other people’s stuff and decide if she wanted it to be her stuff and places she owned and places she “owned” and places she exchanged for money. </p><p>    She’s pretty sure that none of those are the same as what she has now, even though what she has now is an apartment over a brewpub that she shares with four other people, and it doesn’t have two rectangular windows on either side of a door that’s centered in the wall, or a chimney, and the roof is not an 8 pitch. But if she was drawing it with crayons, that’s how she would draw it, and then people would look at her drawing (though, not really, because she is not going around showing people where she lives like some kind of idiot who does not practice any kind of infosec) and know that this is where she sleeps and talks to people, and that Sophie and Nate and Eliot and Alec sleep there too and talk to her and know her, and that’s a good thing. </p><p>    And she feels stuff. Probably good but kind of unsettling sometimes stuff. </p><p>    Before that was less-before than other befores, she had an apartment in Boston--or, she had a room in an apartment in Boston and also several other rooms, and that was. More. Than she’d had before. But it was still just one of many, and so she doesn’t think it’s the same as now, when she has one room that <em> counts. </em> One room that’s <em> hers, </em>even though she shares it with Alec a lot of the time. </p><p>    Alec is another thing she has now that she didn’t have before. Alec is one of the very best things that Parker ever stole (right up there with the shipping container full of money and the chocolate festival), because </p>
<ol>
<li>He is good and </li>
<li>You know. Feelings. Pretzels. Stuff. And a little bit because </li>
<li>The thing about people is that it is very hard to steal them for long without them noticing--they’ve managed a few weeks, at most, and that was frankly a mess--and so that means that it’s really less that she stole Alec and more that he wanted to come along. That’s a surprisingly nice feeling, that feeling of having people that you choose to talk to and know who also choose to talk to you and know you. A very <em>Sweet Home Alabama/</em>crayon house kind of a feeling. </li>
</ol><p>    It’s not surprising, obviously, that she was so good at stealing Alec that he decided to stay. Parker is, after all, the best thief in the world.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>Foundling</strong>
</p><p>Alec came home when he was nine years old. Was brought home? Achieved home? Who can say, really. Alec remembers other places--heck, he remembers his mom, a little, and the McGregors, and the first group home, and the second one--but when he was nine he came home. He got out of the social worker’s car, trash bag in hand, and was ushered up the slightly rickety steps of a two story house painted a kind of faded blue, took off his shoes and put them into his bag instead of the giant shoe pile in the hallway because he’d already learned about hanging onto things, and into a living room where he was actually told to sit down on the sofa. At the McGregors the sofa was clean and he shouldn’t dirty it, it was for company. At the first group home there was a sofa, but the older kids were the only ones allowed to sit on it, or they’d beat you up. At the second one, the sofa had been destroyed in some kind of incident involving weed and a home-made flamethrower about a week before he arrived, and they weren’t getting another one because someone had to teach you little assholes a lesson about consequences. </p><p>    Alec sat down on the sofa when he was told to and kept one hand on his bag and smiled, because smiling was good when he met new grown-ups, smiling meant they thought he was a nice young boy and left him alone. They usually figured out that he wasn’t, actually, even though he tried very hard to remember to be a nice young boy any time a grown-up was looking. </p><p>    You could argue about when that house <em> became </em> home, because he sure as hell didn’t think it was when he was nine--but that’s when he showed up. And if you really wanted to date it, you could probably calculate when he knew it was home by the third time he got suspended. The first time you screwed up, around an adult, they either decided you were actually a little fucking no-good brat and your parents were probably trash, or they doubled down on how you needed to return to the light of the Lord through penance. Two strikes and even more of them would move to the first camp. Nana was the first adult Alec had met who didn’t pull that shit, who looked him in the eye and raised an eyebrow and said, hmmm, in a way that meant she wasn’t impressed by his bullshit but also that she was going to <em> keep </em>being unimpressed at the same time as feeding him and buying him new jeans when he grew (again) and listening to him talk. </p><p>    Alec hadn’t actually met any grown-ups who listened to him when he talked, before turning nine and coming home. Nana didn’t <em> always </em> listen, but if she had a headache and was too tired for nonsense, baby, she’d just tell you that, straight up, and if she didn’t then you couldn’t slip anything by her. She listened <em> and </em>she remembered, which frankly wasn’t always great, because he’d be talking a good game about studying for his Chem test at the library and she’d just give him the slow once over and say, didn’t he take a Chemistry test just two weeks ago? And wasn’t Final Fantasy IX coming out today? </p><p>    She kept him on his toes, that was for damn sure, and it’s not like he didn’t go wandering--because Alec <em> went places</em>, okay, and the Bank of Iceland was not the only global financial institution that assisted--but he figured out, after that third time he’d been suspended, that no matter where he went his Nana would be waiting on the other end of a phone line, listening to him when he called and holding him to whatever he’d promised her. Telling him that sounded like some grade-A nonsense, Alec, and she expected better or her hand to God he would hear about it from her. Still buying him sweaters and warm socks, even when he tells her he’s okay for money, he’s got a good job, he promises. </p><p>    There’s a lot of hokey sayings, about what makes a home, about what makes a family, and luckily Nana isn’t the type to have any of them needlepointed and hung up on her wall, but Alec’s still more familiar than he wants to be. Every social worker’s waiting room, every group home: like someone really thought it would brighten up the place. So he knows the cliches--where the heart is, where when you have to go there, they have to take you in, live laugh love, prays together stays together. All of that. And all of it’s pure nonsense. What makes a home is that when you’re there, you feel safer than you are outside of it. </p><p>Alec’s gone a lot of places, gotten into and out of a lot of trouble, and he can’t honestly say that he’s ever felt safer than the apartment above a brewpub, with Eliot across from him on the sofa telling him he’s an idiot and Parker somewhere in the vicinity, swinging in and out of reach like a cat that doesn’t want to be petted. That sofa, even though it doesn’t look a thing like the one his Nana had back in 1990-mumble (and thank GOD for that, that old sofa was the ugliest damn thing he’s ever put his ass on, which is a high bar to clear), makes him feel exactly the same way. Like he’s unlocked something, like he’s snuck into where he’s sheltered by the most impressive firewall and no one can get him.</p><p>    Like he’s the best hacker in the world… and damn, if that’s not a pretty good feeling.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Money</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Placement</strong>
</p><p>    Parker notices a lot of things. She’s good at noticing, and what she notices is Eliot noticing Alec. Not just the normal parts--Eliot is always watching them, just in case, he could put himself in between them and an approaching target at any time, and that goes for all of them. But Parker notices Eliot noticing the things about Alec that she notices--the way that his shirt pulls up a little when he lifts something onto a table or bends down to plug it in, the way the muscles move on his back and in his arms and his thighs. The way his smile changes when he’s talking about different things, and the way his eyes move across his screens. </p><p>    These are all things that deserve to be noticed--Parker approves. And it’s not like Eliot is the only person who notices them. But when other people notice them and they’re not running a job, Parker sometimes just. Decides to suddenly do the Girlfriend Grift, where she starts giggling and grabs Alec’s hand or his arm and makes her voice sound like that one girl she met when she was thirteen. Usually it makes Alec laugh a little and say she doesn’t need to worry about that, and Parker isn’t ever <em> worried, </em> she just. Decides to do things sometimes because she wants to, and she can. </p><p>    But Eliot doesn’t make her feel like that. Eliot’s eyes on Alec make her feel the way she does when she gets to tell people about the stuff she’s stolen, when they say things like “holy shit” and “no way, that was you?” and she gets to look at them and know that she is the best thief in the world. Parker thinks that maybe this is the sort of situation where she is supposed to sit down next to Eliot and have a bright pink drink, or maybe they are supposed to be in a split-screen over the phone, and one of them is supposed to say “oh my god, girl, he’s so hot!” but she’s not entirely sure. The pink drink is maybe… unnecessary? They have a brewpub, after all. But Parker has had a beer with Eliot many times, and he’s never said “oh my god, girl, he’s so hot!” And even then it doesn’t feel quite correct, because she’s starting to think that the way she feels is like… is the same feeling as team? But also different? That there’s something about <em> Eliot</em>, specifically, looking at Alec, which feels different from everyone else in the world looking at Alec, and it’s different not just because Eliot is team, but because Eliot is… Eliot, compared to Sophie, for example, is more like… team compared to the rest of the world. Eliot is more team than team, as if there’s a whole new, secret team, that is just her and Eliot. A team of looking at Alec in the same way.</p><p>    And the other thing Parker notices is Alec noticing <em> Eliot</em>. This is important, because Alec had explained a lot about how it was important for him that the… pretzel situation. Only involved things that both of them wanted. It had been tricky, sometimes, because Parker wasn’t always great at figuring out how to put the things that she wanted into words that made sense to other people. She could say that she felt like 10:45am on a Tuesday, and then Alec would stop and she would have to stop and explain several different things about consumer traffic patterns and the way security shifts overlapped and it would take a while and several tries to get to the point, which was that 10:45am on a Tuesday was her favorite time of the week to rob banks, and that kissing Alec wasn’t quite as good as money but it was even better than breaking into a safe.</p><p>    Parker has, unfortunately, come to terms with the fact that Alec is not a thing that she can keep the same way that she keeps what she has stolen--safe and secret, just for her. He’s very busy being a magic elf person on the computer with his wizard friends and running jobs and walking around the world, being “so hot” out on the street and in the brewpub where everyone can see him--lots of people notice Alec. Parker doesn’t break glasses about it anymore because she’s learned, now, that she doesn’t need to. Alec is the best thing she’s ever stolen, because he’s a person who stole her right back, who chose on purpose. He’s not going to change his mind, no matter how many people notice his smile. </p><p>No matter if Eliot is one of the people. Alec isn’t going to change his mind, she believes that now in a way she hasn’t really… believed that before. He’s not going to leave her behind. He’s stealing her too. </p><p>But the thing about Eliot being on her team of looking at Alec, is that she also…Parker likes Eliot. Trusts him, which is really totally different and honestly, much rarer. Eliot is like her--a person who does the things that need to be done, a person who’s going to keep an eye on the exits, and knowing that they can be on the same team about Alec is nice. She’d be happy with that. But Parker’s a thief. She’s never grabbed only one diamond when there were two in the vault, never left a bracelet behind just because she’d already taken the watch. When you take someone’s wallet, you don’t just… leave half the bills inside. </p><p>If Eliot’s there to be stolen, then don’t mind if Parker does. It makes her almost giggle to herself, the gleeful greedy idea of having an Alec <em> and </em> an Eliot, it makes her imagine the kind of smirk she could smirk at everyone else who sees them, who would see that Parker has two whole people who choose her and each other, that same deep rush that she feels when she goes out in public draped in diamonds that are hers because she <em> took them. </em> Eliot is her friend, her team-within-a-team, and if he wanted to be even more and beyond that, in the way that Alec is… Parker’s not sure yet, but she’s open to it. They have time. She’s got pretzels. They go pretty well with beer, and hey--they’ve got a brewpub. </p><p>She knew she was ready for Alec when she imagined giving him something that she’d stolen and letting him keep it, just for him, <em> not </em> being hers any longer, and realized that she might be okay with it, because <em> he </em> would still be there with her, and his happiness would almost belong to her, would come from her, and that his happiness was almost, if you could even believe it, better than her stuff. Imagining Alec and Eliot together is the same way--Alec is going to be so <em> happy </em> and that’s going to be so much <em> fun. Eliot </em>is going to be so happy, and if Eliot’s joy triggers that same pride of possession in her, well then. That says something. Also she’s imaging them kissing, and it sends the good, good, $55-thousand-worth-of-priceless-Russian-sapphires-safe-in-a-vault kind of shivers down her spine.</p><p>And given that, and assuming he’s amenable...they might as well both steal Eliot. </p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Layering</strong>
</p><p>    Hardison pays attention to shit. He is a very smart person. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t get taken by surprise, occasionally, because that happens even to extremely smart people, especially when those extremely smart people are dating Parker. Parker’s always surprising. Sometimes, he will admit, he would appreciate a month--or, hell, a week--when Parker <em> wasn’t </em> surprising him, just so that he could, you know, get some stuff done and maybe kick back a little. This girl knows how to get his heart racing, that’s for damn sure. But after a few months, he’s been maybe starting to get the hang of her. Not that he knows what she’s going to say or do, but he starts to see the angle of her head and the way her eyes get bright before she says the really shocking shit, starts to be able to (sometimes) read when she’s proposing something because she wants to get a rise out of him and when she’s just unaware that most people don’t, actually, have secret underground caches of high-quality stolen gemstones and, therefore, blindfolding your significant other and taking him to said underground cache is <em> not </em>a normal “five month anniversary” thing.</p><p>    But Hardison will confess freely that he was 100% completely, unreservedly, not-even-expecting-it-a-little surprised when Parker leans over close to his shoulder from where she’s perched on the back of the sofa and murmurs, “Do you want to kiss Eliot?”</p><p>    He doesn’t do a spittake, but that’s only because he literally just swallowed. So there’s that, at least. He does let out a very high pitched noise, and that’s because he is simultaneously being deeply surprised and slightly terrified and <em> extremely </em> turned on, and he’s come to learn over not quite a year of dating Parker that he makes a very specific high pitched noise under that particular circumstance. </p><p>    “Babygirl, what… why--the nerve, the audacity; Eliot is terrible, face-wise, and frankly… wait, you’re not going to recognize that, are you. Nevermind. Starting over. What?”</p><p>    “Kissing him. Putting your mouth on his mouth.”</p><p>    “Yes, that wasn’t the--Parker.”</p><p>    So the thing is. </p><p>    Hardison pays attention to shit, and yeah, Eliot is some of the shit he pays attention to. Eliot, as a team member--picky about his earpieces, needs softer plastic, and step-by-step instructions if Hardison expects him to so much as stick a USB into a computer, it’s best if his aliases to come with one or two basic preferences, backed up with data (season tickets somewhere, or a museum membership, maybe a country club) so he can have something to talk about, because otherwise he stalls out and tells people he has a <em> pilot’s license </em> or something tricky like that--but Hardison keeps track of that kind of stuff for the whole team. Eliot, generally, as a person--he’s snotty about food in general and food pairings in particular, and he’ll bitch and moan when Hardison leaves a mess in communal spaces but he’ll also clean it up every time, he claims he just doesn’t like wine but he’s actually just <em> incredibly picky </em>and kind of embarrassed about that, and he snores, even if he won’t admit it. </p><p>And yeah, he also pays attention to Eliot, as a body moving through space--a <em> fine </em> body, okay? That boy moves for a living and it <em> shows</em>, muscles that actually do something instead of just getting accumulated for vanity’s sake, efficient and compact motions, every single thing intentional--Hardison doesn’t have a “type” because everyone’s beautiful, baby, but if you insist on shoving two little breathtakingly graceful pint-size badasses who can lift twice their own bodyweight up the side of a building into his lap he’s not going to <em> complain</em>. </p><p>So, yeah, Hardison’s thought about it. He’s a healthy twenty-six year old, okay, he’s <em> thought </em> about it, but he’s also thought about--a lot of people. Rihanna can get it <em> any </em> day of the week, okay, and he stands by his teenage opinions on basically the entire cast of Episode V. Hardison appreciates a lot of things about a lot of people, but he’s also got a scorchingly hot girlfriend who, has he mentioned, can hold a handstand for more than twenty minutes. And her breath for six. </p><p>But--if he really had to get honest, real talk, if it’s <em> Parker </em> asking, Parker who deserves his honesty, Parker who is his <em> partner </em> with all that that entails. Then there’s really only one answer he can give.  </p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, I do want to kiss Eliot, but can I…” he brings up a hand to knead at his temples, “can I ask why we’re discussing this now?”</p><p>“I thought that maybe he was a girl with a pink drink saying ‘get it sister’ but now I think actually he’s the diamond necklace I stole together with this guy, back in 2004, and it belonged to both of us.” She frowned slightly, that cute little face-pinch she did, before continuing “And the guy would be you, except not really because I tranq’d him in the hotel room and took the whole necklace, but I guess… then maybe he’s the guy? And you’re the necklace? Or we’re the necklace together and he’s me… but he’s the team, and you’re you, and the team belongs to… us both? We both do that?”</p><p>“Can’t Eliot just… be Eliot, then?” He appreciates that she’s been trying to branch out, honestly, but Parker’s recent attempts at metaphors mostly just… make him more confused than he was before. He blames Sophie.</p><p>“Okay. Fine. Eliot is Eliot, and you’re you, and I’m me. He wants to kiss you, and you want to kiss him, and I don’t want to stop kissing you but I don’t mind you kissing him, too? If he doesn’t mind kissing you.” Her head tips to the side. </p><p>“So. If I am understanding you correctly, what you are saying is that you think that I, in addition to dating you, could also be dating Eliot?”</p><p>She nods, idly swinging her feet against his hip.</p><p>“The Eliot on this team. The one who we both live here in this apartment and frequently run cons with.”</p><p>She nods again. </p><p>“And you… think that he wants this.”</p><p>“Alec.” </p><p>His girl is insightful, he’s not gonna lie. Which is weird, because she is also… sometimes very much not insightful. She’s a contradiction, a sexy enigma wrapped in a mystery, and he’s distracting himself with nonsense because he doesn’t… he hasn’t let himself think about that, think about Eliot in maybe… a year. Maybe more. He’d decided that clearly, despite the obvious chemistry, Eliot wasn’t into it--maybe he didn’t like the idea of dating within the team, or maybe he was hypothetically down to think another guy was hot but not really ready to take that to practical experience, or maybe it was just that he thought Hardison was hot but too annoying to be worth it. It was hard to tell, with Eliot, sometimes. And honestly, Alec had kind of already done the hooking up with someone who thought he was hot but didn’t actually enjoy him as a person, thing, and it had pretty much… sucked. So he had tried to stop thinking about it, and then Parker had made it clear that she was having feelings for pretzels, and he’d just put a lid on all of those messy Eliot feelings and filed them away. </p><p>But now Parker thinks Eliot wants to kiss him. And for all that she’s a significant learning curve, with their relationship, he trusts her to know the difference between “wants to kiss but wouldn’t actually bother” and “wants to be involved with.”</p><p>“Okay. Yeah, I can say that I… would not mind kissing Eliot.” He squints at her. Parker is great, but not… he doesn’t think “generous” is a word he would really apply. Maybe with other people’s stuff, but Parker’s never really been someone who shared well, and he’s a little surprised if he’s an exception. “And you also… would not mind?”</p><p>Her smile is a here-and-gone wisp of a thing. “I like things that make you happy. I like… giving you things. I don’t like it when other people… see you and don’t know that we’re a team. But Eliot knows. Eliot’s<em> --” </em> she waves a hand vaguely, “we’re already on the same team.”</p><p>“Well, sure, but forgive me if I don’t think this is a gateway to you saying you want me to kiss Sophie,” and Parker’s cat-who-fell-into-the-bath face makes her opinions on that very clear and him half-laugh before he continues, “So what’s the difference, then?”</p><p>“Eliot is… Eliot sees you. He knows that you’re… Eliot knows we’re a team and he’s on our team. He’s not going to… he understands.” She’s frowning now, the way she does when she can’t get the shape of whatever’s in her head out into the air and into someone else’s. Alec tries to piece it together, tries to keep his mind off the prospect of Eliot’s mouth (!!) and on untangling whatever this is. </p><p>“He understands… us?”</p><p>“He understands that you’re… good. He doesn’t just.... He made a brewpub for you.”</p><p>Alec feels his cheeks getting warm. “I don’t--I’d say I baited him into it, really--”</p><p>“He knew. He knows and he… he lets us tease him. It’s <em> Eliot </em>.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Hard to argue with that. “Okay, yeah. If Eliot wants--” he backtracks under the look in her eye, “What about you? Do you--does he--?” He isn’t really sure where he’s going with this, hasn’t ever entirely considered how you discuss with your stunningly hot girlfriend whether only you or the two of you are going to acquire an extremely hot boyfriend. Hadn’t ever thought it was going to be relevant, honestly. And he’s pretty sure, from vague memories of what he thought was an MMORPG conversation that turned out to be about a different kind of unicorn altogether, that they’re going about this in precisely the wrong way, so maybe he should have in fact been optimistic enough to assume that this was going to be relevant, because all knowledge is useful knowledge--or maybe he should stop thinking himself in a circle and listen to aforementioned hot girlfriend, who is talking.</p><p>“I don’t think he would mind kissing me? Most people don’t mind kissing me.” On one hand, she’s not wrong. On the other… he doesn’t even want to get into that.</p><p>“Sure, but what do <em> you </em> want?”</p><p>“Eliot’s team. There are… lots of ways to be team. Up to him.”</p><p>Alec sits with that for a moment. For all that she’s sometimes coming at it upside-down and sideways, it’s hard to argue with where Parker ends up: in the vault, directly in the way of the mark’s escape route, precisely on target. Lying along the top of the sofa telling him that Eliot’s going to be part of them no matter who he’s kissing, so why not be open to the possibility of as much kissing as possible. Busting open safes and Alec’s mind since the day they met. Alec pays attention to shit, and when he sees something beautiful left unguarded, he takes it. He hacks in and rubs his little hands all over it, every single time, and no one can stop him. This, he thinks, staring at his girlfriend, would be a helluva time to <em> stop </em>being greedy.</p><p>He twists around and kisses her, fast and firm, and then goes back and does it again, slower, because Alec Hardison isn’t the kind of idiot who wastes an opportunity like that. He can feel her starting to smile under his lips. “Well, hell, babygirl. Let’s go steal Eliot Spencer.” </p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Integration</strong>
</p><p>    Eliot is always watching. He watches exits, and crowds, and the way people’s hands twitch before they go for a weapon. He watches the way people move, and eat, and walk, and fight. He watches people, and he categorizes them--sorts them by threat category and type, takes note of the distinctive features of their training or affiliation, tracks them as they move through space. He’s always done it, as far back as he can remember, when the stakes were more like “get your ass whupped for talking back,” and he’s only gotten better at it over time. Everything’s about context, and you don’t have context without data. </p><p>    So, to put it bluntly, it’s not like he hasn’t noticed that Hardison’s hot. He clocked that pretty much as soon as they met, that he was in the same room as two very, very pretty people and also Nate Fucking Ford. One guy who didn’t move like he had any combat training at all, but who sure as hell had cheekbones, and a girl who moved… both like she was extremely good at what she did and like what she did wasn’t coming out of any of the playbooks he knew. Then Nate introduced her, and it made sense. <em> The </em>Parker. Twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag, for sure, but Eliot hadn’t been shocked to clock Hardison clocking her the day they met. </p><p>    He had been, honestly, a little surprised at how things evolved from there, but not more surprised then he was by… all of it. The whole thing. The team. Him, part of a team. Compared to that, to owning knickknacks again and trusting them with Aimee, compared to Moreau locked up, to sitting on a park bench holding his whole heart out in his hands so the best thief in the world could offer it back to him, held safe, compared to… all of that shit, the fact that Parker has also noticed Hardison is hot just isn’t that strange. </p><p>    They’re sweet. Eliot hasn’t had a lot of time for sweet, in his life, but they are--poking at each other and whisper-bickering in the way that says, from either one of them, that it’s all in fun. Eliot watches that. He watches them, and it’s not like he can’t still tell they’re both damn good looking, but it honestly isn’t until that puts a pang in him that he realizes he’s gone and gotten <em> attached. </em> You know. More than he already was, differently than he already was. He trusts Sophie, trusts her like he hasn’t trusted many people, because the woman’s a snake but she’s a goddamn <em> professional</em>, and he decided years ago now to let Nate be his conscience, has known that for all that they get on his nerves he’d trust Hardison or Parker to watch his back, but now he’s… now it’s different, with them. He wants to take care of them. He wants to… well. He’s not going to waste time thinking about what he wants. </p><p>    So suffice to say he’s pretty goddamn surprised when Parker plops down next to him on the couch, blithe as blithe can be, and says “You want to kiss Hardison too, right?”</p><p>    He shouldn’t be. He knows that. He should have passed the threshold long ago past which nothing Parker says is surprising, but he guesses not. So he just sits there, long enough that she squints and pokes him, hard, in the shoulder. </p><p>    “Eliot! You want to kiss Hardison, too.” This time it feels like even less of a question. </p><p>And Eliot would respond, knows he’s going to have to respond, but he’s stuck on the “too,” there, because--does she mean, Parker obviously wants to kiss Hardison, does kiss Hardison, and Eliot also wants to kiss him? Unfortunately, true--he’s not really thrilled to be admitting it, even in the privacy of his own mind, but Hardison’s fishhook-deep in Eliot’s stomach, at this point, and that’s not liable to change whether or not he admits it out loud. </p><p>Or does she mean Eliot wants to kiss Hardison and also Parker? Probably also true, albeit not quite in the same… Parker’s a friend, a real friend in a way Eliot thought he was done having real friends, and he’s always known she was a smokeshow. So not quite the same, but yeah. Probably true. </p><p>Or does she, maybe, mean Eliot wants to kiss Hardison, and Hardison wants to kiss him, as well? The least likely option, but even the barest hint of it being possibly true… Eliot can’t bring himself to respond and find out which one she meant. </p><p>She pokes him again, now one of the Parker-pokes that demonstrates exactly how much hand and finger strength it takes to do what she does. “Ow!” He’s in the habit of reacting loudly, like when you’re training a puppy not to bite, because it was clear years ago that Parker’s gage for interpersonal contact was… calibrated oddly. </p><p>“Eliot, I cannot tell if you are a girl with a pink drink or not.”</p><p>That is… he doesn’t want to open whatever can of Parker-worms that’s going to be. He turns to look at her, really look at her. She’s squinting at him, the way she gets when she’s trying to hear where the tumblrs click on people and finding it a hard job. Dammit. He--Eliot’s always been a soft touch, hasn’t he, tried to bury it for a while but he’s basically given up, these last few years. And he hasn’t lied to Parker in… a while. Doesn’t want to start up now, looking at her face, scrunched brows and sincere eyes. <em> Dammit. </em> </p><p>“Yes, all right? Y’happy now?”</p><p>“Good. Are we going to steal you, or are you and I just going to steal him?”</p><p>“Try that again.”</p><p>“Do you want to kiss Hardison, and I will also kiss Hardison? Or do you want… to kiss me and Hardison?” She sounds like she’s getting a little frustrated, now, that he’s not keeping up with her. </p><p>“Do I…” Eliot sucks in a deep breath. This is going to go spectacularly tits up, any moment now. This is going to be a hot mess and he’s going to regret it. And normally, Eliot isn’t--well, okay. He can’t really say that he doesn’t jump into stupid risks face-first and hope for the best, because the last five years of his life (and, if he’s really going to be honest, the fifteen or twenty before that) are solid evidence that he sure as hell does. But Eliot is mostly risking his body, sometimes his life. He’s risking the payout, not infrequently, and he kind of thought he’d maybe grown out of risking his heart. But when he asks himself, when he really takes a moment to see Parker, sitting there on the couch, looking so damn happy it’s a little bit terrifying… he ante’d up at least a year ago, on these two. He’s been all in for a while, on the whole stupid bunch of them, and it’s pretty stupid to pretend that getting his dick involved is going to make him any more heartbroken when this whole thing collapses. </p><p>Shut up and get out of your own way, Eliot Spencer.</p><p>“Is that your way of saying you want to kiss me?”</p><p>She shrugs, that particular insouciant Parker shrug that says she understands that ordinary, boring people care about this sort of thing but she doesn’t bother. “If you wanted to just kiss Hardison, that would be okay. But if you wanted to kiss me, we could steal you. And it would be like when I stole the Rosalind Diamond but, better. Because Hardison is,” and she leans in a bit here, lowers her voice like a little kid telling secrets, “better than diamonds. Don’t tell him I said that.”</p><p>“You talked to Hardison about this?”</p><p>“I just told you not to tell him.”</p><p>“Not the--Parker, not the diamond thing, the kissing thing, dammit. You talked to Hardison about him kissing me, or the two of--” he can’t even quite finish the thought, because hearing it come out of his own mouth is too…</p><p>“Yes. Of course I talked to Hardison. We don’t do a job without talking about it.”</p><p>“I’m not a job, Parker.”</p><p>The look she gives him is almost pitying, and he decides that pursuing that is not going to be a worthwhile use of his time. With Parker you have to pick your battles.</p><p>“Parker. Hardison is okay with this? He--he wants this?”</p><p>Now it is definitely pitying. “Eliot. Lots of people want to kiss you. This isn’t new information.”</p><p>“Sure--but those lots of people include Hardison. And you. That is.”</p><p>“Yes, he wants to kiss you. And I think I might like stealing you. But I don’t need to, if you don’t want to--we can be the girls with the pink drinks, if you want.”</p><p>Okay, now he does need to open the can. “Girls with pink drinks? You drink beer, and I ain’t a girl.”</p><p>“Eliot! The ones who go ‘ooh girl, he’s so hot’ and drink pink drinks at the bar, when the movie is approximately 23 minutes in.”</p><p>“Ah.” It’s actually surprisingly relevant, for one of Parker’s metaphors. “Okay. Then I think… I would be okay with being a--with kissing Hardison and with kissing you.” </p><p>Eliot is very accustomed to keeping things professional with people he’d gladly sleep with. He did it in the Army and he did it professionally afterwards, too. He would have been okay with being… team. He wouldn’t even, really, have been compromising on anything, because to compromise meant to give up something you wanted and Eliot hadn’t even really dared to want anything more than what he had. He’s damn lucky and he knows it, and if his luck had been to take care of Hardison and Parker, to watch over them and keep them safe when their latest damnfool scheme went badly, to be in their lives and feed them an actual vegetable once in a blue moon, it would have been better luck than he’s ever had before. </p><p>Eliot’s been self-destructive, he’s been reckless with himself, and he’s been too much of a fucking coward to take what he wanted. He doesn’t need to do any of that again. So he turns a little, to face her more fully, to take in and really appreciate the energy coiled to spring that’s always lurking under Parker’s skin, and says, loud and clear, so help him God, “I would be very happy to, as a matter of fact.”</p><p>And then he does. He leans forward and kisses her, slow and warm and gentle--until, about three seconds in, she bites him on the lip and eels forward into him, hands skimming his shoulders, blisteringly hot. And then almost as quickly she’s gone, pulling away and bouncing up cheerfully.</p><p>She reappears a few moments later, hauling Hardison by the wrist, and it’s not until she pushes him down onto the couch next to Eliot and squirms in next to him that it really hits him, like a sock to the gut, what’s happening. What’s about to happen. He’s leaning forward almost without intending to, drawn like a magnet, and Hardison is leaning in too, one of those clever, clever hands coming up to cling to Eliot’s arm. It tastes like he’d just brushed his teeth, which answers the question of how much warning Parker gave <em> him, </em>and Hardison kisses just like he talks, just like he grifts--too much, too fast, but damn if it’s not working for him. It’s sure as hell working for Eliot. </p><p>He supposes he can’t be too surprised. If you hang out long enough with thieves, eventually you’re going to get stolen.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The three stages of the money laundering process are placement (getting dirty money into a legitimate business), layering (making it hard to detect by moving it around), and integration (the money is now clean and can be spent like normal). </p><p>One more wee coda to come :D</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Want</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Purpose</strong>
</p><p>   Hardison has always been a purpose-oriented kind of guy. He’s had a lot of dreams, a lot of when-I-grow-up-I’m-gonnas, a lot of goals. He’s had a lot of bucket lists and big plans, and he’s accomplished… some of them, okay? He’s still young. He’s not in a hurry. Whatever. And frankly, it’s not like he had “acquire two smoking hot life partners who could definitely bench press me” on his to-do list, and holy shit, was that an oversight. Apparently maybe he should have had “read up on ethical non-monogamy” on his list because it seems like they went about it extremely ass-backwards. But hey, sometimes you just gotta check shit off your list and keep moving, so. Consider that <em>check</em>. </p><p>    He also honestly hadn’t really had “make the world a better place” on there in at least six or seven years. But whatever, <em>check</em> on that too. </p><p>    Buy Nana a house and a nice car, that’s been firmly checked off for a very long time. Same with “be the best hacker in the world”--and if anyone wants to say anything, Alec will meet them in the <em>pit</em>, okay, by which he means he will meet them online and demolish them so thoroughly they will run home crying to their mommies. Steal the dagger of Aqu’abi, <em>check</em>--and do not even<em> play</em> with him, Eliot, it is a <em>check</em>--rob the bank of Iceland, <em>check</em>, hook up with someone in the actual original Millenium Falcon, <em>check</em>--yeah, that’s right, you’re jealous--go to a restaurant and actually order one of everything, <em>check</em>, run Doom on the Analytical Engine, <em>check</em>. Hardison’s not doing too bad, okay, with the whole, achieving his goals thing. He’s never worried about that kind of shit. N=NP and the Halting Problem are on there, it’s just gonna take a little while.</p><p>    And like. Maybe, you could argue, he’s found some new goals, lately. Some goals that are little more important than doing whatever cool shit he wants, whenever he wants it. Some goals that he feels good about checking off. Maybe there had been a time when saving the world was on his list, and he’d stopped… well. Stopped caring only because he didn’t think he could do it anymore. Which was dumb, obviously, because he is <em>Alec Hardison</em>, and it is the age of the geek. He’s got Lucille 3.0 and his very own brewpub and an extremely snazzy new gaming rig and a family. And he can do whatever the fuck he wants.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Family</strong>
</p><p>    Eliot has had a lot of families, by some counts--the first one, before it went bad, and then every five seconds in the army, they try to tell you that they’re your new family now. Moreau’s guys were--well. Eliot’s the kind of guy who bonds easily enough that he doesn’t let himself bond at all, holds everyone at the polite and professional remove of someone who, if the paycheck falls out differently next time, will politely and professionally knock you unconscious and leave you tied up in a dumpster. Eliot’s been called “bro” by a wide variety of assholes he doesn’t respect, and he’s gone on to punch no small number of them. If you really wanted him to be honest, though, Eliot could count the number of people who have been family on the fingers of one hand; three of them have been dead and buried for quite some while. </p><p>    The other two are sleeping in his bed, still, since Hardison tends to forget all about sleep until it catches up with him with a vengeance, and Parker was out wandering until 2 in the morning like a feral cat before slipping in through the window and under the covers, he’s pretty sure just for the pleasure of pressing her icicle feet to his legs.</p><p>    There’s enough combined genius and ridiculousness snuggled under that duvet to keep him guessing for a good long time, if he dares to think that far in advance. To make plans and set down roots. To move his kitchen-window herb garden into the actual dirt and let Parker paint the ceilings whatever tomfool color she’s got her heart settled on. </p><p>    Eliot’s always loved too easily and it’s gotten him in trouble, but maybe his heart just needed excavating, needed to be carved wide open enough to fit these two inside it, and if all of that was the price he thinks he’d pay it gladly. </p><p>    Eliot has home, now, and a team and a family.</p><p>    And he can love whoever the fuck he wants.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Home</strong>
</p><p>    Parker’s owned a lot of homes, and she guesses she made a few, too--or tried. She copied the things she saw, like one of the weird blurry paintings that doesn’t really look like the world but somehow is worth a <em>lot</em> of money, because apparently rich people like to look at weird, smeary copies of things (<em>you mean, like a Monet?</em> Sophie had asked, voice doing that thing it did when Sophie knew what Parker was going to say but wasn’t happy about it). She put a bed and a dresser and a teddy bear in a big empty room and she came back and slept there, and she was trying, she guesses, to like… whatever. Whatever, it’s not a big deal. She knows that now.</p><p>    She has a room, now, and it’s better than any of the other rooms she’s slept in, because this one she sleeps in with Alec, and with Eliot, and they both… know her, and talk to her. And they feel stuff and she feels stuff too. She can even describe the stuff, she thinks, the stuff is safety, and affection, and love. The stuff is the way that Eliot rolls his eyes at them and Alec shrieks when they tease him, the stuff is all the things she didn’t think she’d have, stacked up safe and secure like money in a vault. The way she’s starting to be able to understand what they’re thinking, sometimes, even when they don’t say it, like looking at a grid of lasers and seeing the safe pathway through, diamond-clear and shining.</p><p>    She’s a Mastermind. </p><p>    She can have whatever the <em>fuck</em> she wants.</p><p>    And this? This is pretty damn good.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Gratitude to @ladymurgatroid for offering me both Doom on The Analytical Engine and the extremely accurate characterization note that Hardison refers to it solely as Lovelace's and _will_ correct people who call it the Babbage Analytical Engine. </p><p>Hope everyone had fun, thanks again to picklesandsweetpea for the donation to FairVote!</p>
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